Never in My Wildest Dreams: a Black Woman’S Life in Journalism
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
An Excerpt From Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism By Belva Davis Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers Contents Photo section follows page 114 Foreword by Bill Cosby ix 1. “What the Hell Are You Niggers Doing in Here?” 1 2. Up from Troubled Waters 11 3. Truth Isn’t What You Want to See 21 4. Strained Mercies 31 5. In the Driver’s Seat 41 6. Vapors and Black Ink 51 7. Lucky 13 61 8. Lend Me a Tiara 73 9. Dreams Deferred 83 10. New Station in Life 93 11. His-and-Hers Gas Masks 101 12. Ringside at the Racial Revolution 115 13. Freeze Frames 131 14. A Woman’s Touch 143 15. When Work Hits Home 151 16. White Night and Dark Days 169 17. Diversified Interests 181 18. Going Global 193 19. Special Reports 205 20. Never in My Wildest . 215 Gratitudes 223 Acknowledgments 226 Index 227 About the Authors 237 Foreword by Bill Cosby When we had a houseboat in San Francisco Bay in the late 1960s, Mrs. Cosby and I, we would watch the news on TV. And there would be Belva Davis, out reporting stories and anchoring the newscasts. And my wife looked at me and said, “That’s the most relaxed woman I’ve ever seen at being perfect.” What’s important to remember is that those of us who made history, those of us who were among the fi rst of our race to do some particular thing in the United States, disproved fallacies that said our lips wouldn’t allow us to pronounce words properly; that our brains wouldn’t allow us to write, to speak, to make anyone understand anything; and then, of course, that our color would not only turn off viewers but lead them to turn us off as well. Belva Davis, like tennis star Althea Gibson, like educator and presidential advisor Mary McLeod Bethune, carried it off. She made covering the news look so natural, so easy, that people couldn’t believe that it was her job. Belva Davis was someone who sustained us, who made us proud. We looked forward to seeing her prove the stereotypical ugliness of those days to be wrong. She was the fi rst woman of color that many viewers came to know and trust, and she met that challenge with integrity and dignity and grace. We had fi rst become acquainted some years earlier, when I was doing standup comedy at clubs like the hungry i in San Francisco, and Belva was a disc jockey on black radio station KDIA in Oakland. I was fi rst her inter- view subject, then her studio guest on her own radio show, and then her friend. I was happy to take the stage and formally introduce her when she was honored with the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She has always had energy to burn, whether she’s ix x . Never in My Wildest Dreams gathering the news or fi ghting for minority rights or producing a commu- nity event. People should know that Belva Davis is a pure, pure woman — warm and generous. But they also should know that they should be careful if they haven’t behaved or been fair or honest. When this lady puts pen to paper, the world had better watch out. one “What the Hell Are You Niggers Doing in Here?” I could feel the hostility rising like steam off a cauldron of vitriol: fl oor del- egates and gallery spectators at the Republican National Convention were erupting in catcalls aimed at the press. South of San Francisco, people were sweltering inside the cavernous Cow Palace, which typically hosted rodeos. In July of 1964 it offered ringside seats for the breech birth of a right-wing revolution. My radio news director, Louis Freeman, and I lacked credentials for the press box — actually we knew that some whites at this convention would fi nd our mere presence offensive. Although Louis was brilliant and had a deep baritone voice and a journalism degree, his fi rst boss had warned Louis he might never become a radio reporter because Negro lips were “too thick to pronounce polysyllabic words.” But Louis, whose enunciation was fl awless, eventually landed an on-the-hour news slot on KDIA-AM, the Bay Area’s premier soul-gospel-jazz station; and he was determined to cover the convention. It was said that the national press was fl ocking to the GOP confab to “report Armageddon.” Louis wanted to be at the crux of the story, relaying to our black listeners all the news that white reporters might deem insignifi cant. I was the station’s intrepid ad traffi c manager, a thirty- one-year-old divorced mother of two, who had no journalism training. No question Louis would have preferred a more formidable companion: I’m delicately boned and stand merely fi ve foot one in stockings. But I was an eager volunteer. More to the point, I was his only volunteer. And I was, in his words, “a moxie little thing.” He had fi nagled two spectator passes from one of the black delegates — they made up less than 1 percent of convention participants. So there we were, perched in the shadows under the rafters, 1 2 . Never in My Wildest Dreams scribbling notes and recording speeches, mistakenly presuming we had found the safest spot to be. Day One of the convention had been tense but orderly. GOP organizers had strictly instructed delegates to be on their best behavior for the televi- sion cameras, and they had complied. Day Two would be different. Day Two was starting to spin out of control. Indeed, the “Party of Lincoln” was ripping apart before our eyes. Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, a fl inty fi rebrand whose ruggedly chis- eled face would have rested easy on Mount Rushmore, had tapped into a mother lode of voter anxiety about Communism, crime, and especially civil rights. His followers came prepared to jettison the party’s moderate wing, and they were spurred on by Goldwater’s fantasy of sawing off the Eastern Seaboard to let it fl oat out to sea. The press noted that he could win the nom- ination by coalescing the right and attracting fringe groups such as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, and reporters were openly questioning whether the party was on the verge of being taken over by extremists. So when former president Dwight D. Eisenhower stepped into the spot- light at the podium, I leaned forward intently, hoping the avuncular Ike would provide a soothing balm of rationality. Indeed his speechwriters had crafted a temperate address that gave nods to free enterprise, a denunciation of violent radicals on the left or right, and even benign praise about America’s progress on civil rights. But Eisenhower had personally and uncharacteristically inserted a couple of poison-tipped arrows into his script, and he let the fi rst fl y straight at the press: “Let us particularly scorn the divisive efforts of those outside our family — including sensation-seeking columnists and commentators — because my friends I assure you, these are people who couldn’t care less about the good of our party.” The Cow Palace erupted in jeers, boos, and catcalls. Fists shot up in the air and shook angrily in the direction of the press box and broadcast anchor booths. The convention’s contempt for even the most respected reporters of the day was palpable — when professorial John Chancellor of NBC News refused to surrender his fl oor spot to the dancing “Goldwater Girls,” secu- rity guards brusquely carted him out, prompting him to wryly sign off with “This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody.” Eisenhower, meanwhile, wasn’t fi nished. “Let us not be guilty of maud- “What the Hell Are You Niggers Doing in Here?” . 3 lin sympathy,” he bellowed, “for the criminal who, roaming the streets with the switchblade knife and illegal fi rearm, seeking a helpless prey, suddenly becomes, upon apprehension, a poor, underprivileged person who counts upon the compassion of our society and the laxness or weakness of too many courts to forgive his offense.” Without actually uttering the word Negroes, the former president spoke in a code that needed no translation for those white Americans who regarded black people as an encroaching threat. Eisenhower, whether he realized it or not, seemed to be granting permission to the whites’ prejudice and hatred. I suspect he was unprepared for the deafening applause, cheers, shouts, and honked Klaxons that ensued. Louis and I warily locked eyes, neither of us willing to outwardly betray a hint of alarm. Next on the agenda were controversial platform amend- ments on civil rights. We had a job to do. The satirist H. L. Mencken once observed that a national political con- vention often is as fascinating as a revival, or a hanging: “One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell — and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous, that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.” Mencken, of course, had the luxury of being white. We did not. For Louis and me, the next hour would indeed feel like a year, but a grotesque one. First, the entire Republican platform was read aloud — a tedious ploy to delay any ugly debate over amendments until the prime time viewing hour would be past.